Better fishing pictures: Glorious light

Remember taking pictures in the magic hour when the light is there

The term Glorious Light is not mine but photographer Ken Rockwell's. His articles are always worth reading, and I can fully agree with him on the fact that good light is only really present a few minutes every day. Many anglers refer to this period as the golden hour or the magic hour, praising the great light just around sunrise and sunset. The "hour" in the name reveals that it might be more than just a few minutes, which are magic.

Minutes or not, the phenomenon usually occurs just around sunset and sunrise. This is particularly the case if you take pictures close to the equator where the sun rises and sets more vertically. Further north and south, like in Scandinavia, Iceland, Canada, Alaska, South America and many more places we have a sun that moves in a lower path across the sky much of the year, so we often have more chances for some non-vertical light. And we see more clouds than around equator. And clouds create dynamic skies and often great landscape images.

Be it sunrise or sunset, the sun passing behind a cloud, a sudden outburst of rain or snow—the moment arises and passes in an instant, and you have to be ready when it's there.

Rockwell is sure that most photographers sleep through these magic moments, which may be true for the average photographer, but we anglers know better than to sleep through sunup and leave before the sun disappears under the horizon!
That is because we know that fishing is also best in the magic hour just around sunrise and sunset. Fish seem to prefer Glorious light too.

So always have your camera ready when you witness sunups or sunsets. Brace yourself with patience and make sure you get ready before the dish of the sun shows, and wait until the sun is fully gone, because oftentimes the best sceneries will be just before and just after. Once the sun is on the sky, the light is usually bright and the magic is gone.

Be particularly aware of clouds. If you have clouds forming on the horizon or over your head while in these magic minutes, there's a highly increased chance of seeing and photographing something spectacular.

Use the water to get reflections of the sky. The symmetry can be stunning. You can even consider mainly having the sky reflected in the surface of the water and not having the sky itself in the viewfinder. Isolating silhouettes of anglers in this way can create some beautiful effects. You may want to disobey the general rule of a low stance, and find somewhere high to get the anglers profile clear against the water behind him or her.

Since the fish often bite in the golden hour, there might even be a chance that you can get a strike, a fight and a fish in that nice light or with that excellent backdrop. Use the low light as a source to light your subject and not only as a background. Remember to use a fill flash if you shoot into the sun or the bright horizon and underexpose a bit to get more saturation and avoid burned-out parts of the picture.

As always you should take plenty pictures. In these digital days there is no reason not to shoot dozens and do a lot of experimentation with exposure.

These images below demonstrate why pressing the shutter release again and again is important. Get as many views of the situation as you can and sort when you get home. The six images below are selected from about 30 shots fired between 5:28 and 5:33pm into a November sunset. Notice the difference between top row and bottom row. There is less than a minute between the two rows.

These are all the articles in our series about better fly fishing photography. Read this series and you will learn a lot ebout getting better pictures while fishing. General outdoors pohotographers may also pick up a thing or two...

Sigred Olsen, noted Minnesota author and explorer of Canadian canoe lands, called the last 5 minutes Ross Light, after a famous photographer/painter friend of his.

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